In the last year or so there has been a quiet revolution in advertising real estate. While real estate agencies took advantage of an on-line presence early on, it wasn't until the media giants entered the on-line advertising business that real estate advertising took off on-line.
www.realestate.com.au (REA Group - News Corp)
www.domain.com.au (Farifax)
The core problem is that the operators of the property web sites pay Google for advertising and keyword paid searches. But Google has now launched its own service that aggregates all the other property listings on Google Maps.
"Google has 92 per cent of the search advertising market and this year is expected to book revenues close to $1 billion."
"Google is moving from being a search engine to a portal. Instead of sending you to other websites — which have paid money to be there on its listings — it is now serving up the end data itself.
"That then raises the question: why would you need to go to the other sites and why would they then pay Google money [for search keywords]. Google has opened up a Pandora's box of questions."
Q1. What are the marketing issues here?
Q2. How will the emerging on-line advertising affect the property market?
Q3. Who are the key players in this market?
